


The Crack in the Chrysalis

by quixotesque



Category: Black Panther (2018)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Fix-It, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Misogyny, Pre-Slash, Therapy
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-27
Updated: 2018-12-21
Packaged: 2019-08-08 15:24:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,178
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16431998
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quixotesque/pseuds/quixotesque
Summary: Erik dies under the light of his first Wakandan sunset and there is no Bast or Sekhmet or the eternal freedom of Djalia.Erik dies, and then he’s alive, opening his eyes, blinking up into clean, white light, bleary thoughts resolving soon enough into,For fuck’s sake.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> For the lovely [surrend-at-20](https://surrend-at-20.tumblr.com/) on tumblr, who is 1) a wonderful artist and blessed me with a few of their pieces and 2) who asked for Erik surviving and a scene with Erik and Shuri, so I merged those requests with an attempt I already had in mind to write a story where I could try figuring Erik out a bit. I'm still not sure how successful I've been with that attempt.
> 
> Nevertheless, I hope you all enjoy. A massive thank you to Daan for their speedy beta-ing and just generally indulging me as I wailed about this fic to them.

_It’s dark outside. The lights in their apartment turn everything the pale yellow of an old photograph._

_The TV’s on, but Erik’s not paying attention. He slowly scuffs the tips of his sneakers against the wooden floor. He’s got a question tonight, so, tentatively, he says, “Baba…”_

_“What is it, N’Jadaka?” A distracted reply. His father’s at the window again, looking out for something only he knows._

_“In Wakanda,” Erik begins, and now his father turns towards him, like Erik’s said the magic word, “what happens to someone after they die?”_

_“Why are you asking such a thing?”_

_Erik shrugs. “I just hope something good happens to them. Just ‘cause it feels like...every day people are dying.”_

_His father’s eyes are large and sad. “Unfortunately, it does.” He leaves the window and sits next to Erik, pulling him into a strong, one-armed embrace, and Erik smells his father’s strange scent, his unknowable scent, again._

_“Bast and Sekhmet,” his father says, “they wait for the dead. They take them by the hand and let them run through Djalia, the ancestral plane. The sky is a swirl of beautiful colors. The land has no end.”_

_“And nothing can hurt them anymore?” Erik asks. It’s the most important question._

_“No, my son.” His father’s hand, gentle over Erik’s hair. “They are as free as the wind. They’re free forever.”_

+

Erik dies under the light of his first Wakandan sunset and there is no Bast or Sekhmet or the eternal freedom of Djalia.

Erik dies, and then he’s alive, opening his eyes, blinking up into clean, white light, bleary thoughts resolving soon enough into,  _For fuck’s sake_.

There’s no pain when he sits up. None of the Herb’s strength, either, just a strange, lingering hollowness. The ordinary husk of his ordinary human body. Erik checks his bare chest, finds the skin the same it had been before T’Challa had driven a blade into him.

His father’s ring is still sitting on his right forefinger, Kimoyo band also there on his left wrist, the functions drastically limited to the Prime Bead monitoring his health. Erik pulls, but the beads remain fixed in place like they’ve been soldered to his skin and he’d have to cut into himself to remove them.

The floor is cold under his feet as he walks around, the air the sterile sort typically found in a hospital room. There’s nothing that would make for a good weapon. Only one entrance—a metal door that he’s not sure would open for him—and windows in the ceiling too high for him to reach. From somewhere beyond the walls comes a regular muted thump, steady as any 808 he’s ever heard.

Erik’s alone, except for the rage he’s always known, an old friend heaving hot in his blood, creaking and brittle in his knuckles as he fists them tight.  _T’Challa_ , he thinks. T’Challa’s done this to him.

Mere seconds later, as if somehow alerted by Erik’s thoughts, the door hisses open and T’Challa steps through.

No red and gold shadows trail behind him. He’s an immaculate, regal picture, elegant clothes neatly pressed, embroidery at the collar, the edges of the sleeves, a culture in those sleekly curving patterns that Erik had been unable to touch for so long. T’Challa stops at just at the right distance from Erik, hands held casually behind his back and expression stone-like, giving away nothing. The teeth of the Panther necklace are perfectly cut, gleaming slivers around his neck, bright in the sunshine pouring in through the skylights.

Erik already misses the solid weight of his own necklace. He tenses, conscious that he lacks the armor T’Challa has, that he’s got too many target areas on display, and prepares himself for if things get physical, already seeking out the points of T’Challa’s body that he could strike. It’s instinctive, now, to be ready to kill. To see another body and immediately work out how to destroy it.

They watch each other in silence, except that any silence between them is also something with a life of its own, a simmering charge and vibration moving through it like the ticking of an explosive perpetually primed for detonation.

“How are you feeling?” T’Challa asks eventually.

Erik stares. An incredulous laugh scrapes its way out of his throat. “Seriously? That’s what you’re gonna start with?”

“You’re not in any pain, then. Good. I presume you have questions.”

“You presume, huh?”

“And that you’re angry.”

“Astute fucking observations. What the hell is this? Why am I still alive.”

“I’m angry, too,” T’Challa continues as if Erik hadn’t replied. “I’m angry that you tried to destroy the sacred gift that Bast gave us. That you killed one of our beloved Doras. That you tried to kill my sister. That you told W’Kabi to kill me and that he listened and, in doing so, started a civil conflict. These are just some of the things I’m angry about.”

“You should talk to someone about all that,” Erik says indifferently. He eyes the door behind T’Challa. “No dogs with you today?”

“They served you for a time, short as it was. You should them show more respect.”

“You’re right. I should be more accurate. They all women, so I should really be calling those traitors bi—"

“Don’t,” T’Challa says, quick, sharp, “finish that sentence and ruin the second chance I’m giving you before we’ve even started. The Dora Milaje acted as they should have. It was you who grew too arrogant and threw the same challenge that brought you to power. You only have yourself to blame, N’Jadaka.”

He says Erik’s name easily, like he’s said it his whole life. Erik wants to rip it out of his mouth. He imagines all the two-hundred and sixty bones that make up the human body and he snaps each one in his hands ‘til T’Challa is a broken, mismatched jumble of ivory at his feet.

“I never asked for no second chance,” he snaps back, “but you must want your pound of flesh that bad. Either that or you some kind of pussy about to forgive a man who tried to kill you and yours.”

“Forgive you?” T’Challa’s brow creases. He seems like the one on verge of laughing now. “This isn’t forgiveness. You’re still a long way away from earning that. It isn’t about wanting my pound of flesh, either.”

“I told you—”

“I remember what you told me.”

“So you don’t care about the choice I made?”

“Do you think you’re above penance? You speak of choice. Did you ever give those you killed a choice? Did you honor their final requests?”

“I did what I had to do,” Erik says. To go as far as you can, to give everything of yourself for one precious dream – it’s nothing T’Challa could understand.

“And I’m doing what I have to do. You laid a hand on Wakanda, so you will face Wakandan justice.”

T’Challa stands there, august and untouchable, full of some kind of fresh clarity and purpose, and Erik understands that this isn’t the T’Challa he’d met. The T’Challa he’d known for a handful of moments, who’d ignored any killing blows he could’ve laid at Warrior Falls and whose wounded body Erik had thrown to drown in the turbulent waters below. This is someone else, a new configuration of the man Erik thought he’d already figured out how to defeat.

“I should just beat the shit outta you again.”

“You tried that already and you lost. I’m not interested in going around in circles with you.”

“So, what, I’m s’posed to rot in one of your prisons now? You think I’m just gon’ play by your rules?”

“Truthfully? No,” T’Challa says. “But we ought to at least try. There’s still so much of Wakanda you don’t know. You’ll find our method of justice isn’t entirely what you think it is.”

Erik sneers. “Such a noble man, easing your own conscience like that.”  

“I know it’s difficult for you to believe I’d want to do anything but make you suffer.”

“You don’t know shit about me, man.”

Only Erik knows what T’Challa knows. What T’Challa’s seen.  _The world took everything away from me! Everything I ever loved!_ His voice too young. Like a hurt child’s. Tears almost springing up to his eyes. Then he’d pulled it all out of sight, found his anger again, let its chaos fill him back up, even though he’d been aware in the back of his mind that the damage had already been done.

If T’Challa’s recalling the same thing, he doesn’t let it show. His Kimoyo band chirps out some notification. “It’s only been a day since our fight in the mines,” he says. “There is still much to do, so your trial will be held next week. I can’t stay any longer, but Shuri will be here soon to look you over. I’m sure I don’t need to warn you to not lay a hand on her.”

“I’m making no promises,” Erik says with snide flippancy, just to see T’Challa’s face go steely and cold. “You more of a clown than I thought. A trial ain’t gonna end in my favor. You should’ve just let me die and saved us both the time.”

“That would’ve saved time, yes,” T’Challa agrees. “We’ll talk again later, cousin.” He walks away but not without one final, thoughtful pause at the door, saying over his shoulder, “We’re going to give you something more than imprisonment. I hope one day you’ll be able to see that.”

Erik imagines snapping bones with his hands again. His fingers curl into nothing except for his own skin, leaving behind nail-marks that hurt only himself.

+

Shuri is five foot five inches of thinly concealed animosity.

Unlike T’Challa, she hasn’t come alone. Her guards stand behind her, four blank-faced men in purple and gold. They have spears in hand, sickles at the waist, and eyes that stare unwaveringly at Erik. One guard carries the same kind of handcuffs Erik had worn into the council chamber only two days ago.

Absently, he wonders if their presence is more down to T’Challa than Shuri herself. If their reaction time would be fast enough to stop Erik from reaching for their precious princess. She’s got all the look of a fragile bird, too slight, easily breakable, like all it would take is one firm press of his hand.

Shuri plucks at the holos detailing his vitals without saying much at all, lips pressed together as if she’s holding back with effort. Erik remembers her fallen on the ground, the defiance in her face, the spite. Her certainty as she’d said,  _you’ll never be a true king_ , and the anger that had crackled through him at the words.

Her pointed silence makes him want to prod. He lets his gaze sit on her ‘til he’s sure she can feel its unrelenting weight.

“You really gonna give me the silent treatment, Princess? You always have so much to say.”

Shuri’s eyes narrow, but she stays focused on a vivid diagram depicting the anatomy of Erik’s chest where it had been a shredded puzzle of torn flesh under her brother’s hand. It’s not the first time Erik’s seen the inside of his body, but x-ray scans of himself had felt strangely removed, flat, wraithlike shapes that could’ve belonged to anyone.

Shuri’s holos are solid. Tangible. He could touch the place where vibranium had slid in expertly between his ribs, close enough to almost nick the apex of his heart. He could go in even deeper, beyond fine rivers of blood and delicate filaments of tissue, and press a fingertip right into his cells, the microstructure that constituted him.

“I died,” Erik says. His voice sounds hollow to his own ears. “I know I did. I felt it.”

Now Shuri looks at him. At last, the cage of her tensed jaw loosens. “Yes,” she says. “You were dead by the time T’Challa carried you in.”

Dying had been a cold journey, his breath a stumbling thing catching and catching in his tight throat—and T’Challa had been so warm against him even through the suit, holding him steady, mouth shaping words that had gone curiously silent, the darkness of his eyes and the glow of the sunset shimmering along his irises all Erik could see.

“You brought me back. Only, what, sixteen years old? And you can pull off something like that. Pretty impressive. But I’m surprised you even in here right now after how I was about to end you back there. How’d he convince you to help me?”

“I’m not going to run away from you like a frightened little mouse, Killmonger. As for my brother, he is the best man I’ve ever known. He has a way of making you want to be as good as him.”

“Can’t say he’s got the same effect on me.”

“No, that would be asking too much.”

“What’d it take to fix me up?”

“Nanomachines, of course,” Shuri says, as if it’s nothing, and Erik supposes it  _is_  nothing here in Wakanda, where genius is commonplace and achieving the impossible routine.

He’s had fellow soldiers bleed out under his hands, seen families laughing one moment, then dead on the ground the next, life reduced to nothing but just a wet smear, blood that would sink into the earth and live there forever. He’s seen it on deployments. Seen it Stateside. Seen it more often than not. More skill like Shuri’s, more tech like Shuri’s, and he wouldn’t have to.

“Of course,” Erik drawls with mocking emphasis. “Think you might wanna export some of those nanomachines to stop our people dying needlessly out there?”

“I thought the only thing you wanted to export was murder.”

“Now you just being mean, making assumptions like that about me. Ain’t we family?”

Shuri grimaces. Her eyes linger over his scars, her condemnation obvious.  

“Wanna fix those, too?”

“In Wakanda, scars are kept out of honor. There is no honor in any of yours.”

The same anger she’d sparked in him last time scalds Erik again. “Don’t talk to me about honor, little girl,” he hisses. “You ain’t got no right to judge me.”

Shuri pulls back instinctively, but it’s not fear in her face, only the same enmity that’s rushing fast through Erik’s veins. “So you are still blaming us for our father’s mistakes. What about your own father’s mistakes?”

“What you know about my daddy?” he demands, leaving the bed he’d been perched on, stepping forward, intent on snatching up Shuri’s bird-bone fragility because he’s right and all it would take is just one press, just one—

A blue beam aims at his head, shooting out from Shuri’s Kimoyo band. Her other arm is aloft in the air, a gesture to pacify her guards whose spears are leveled at Erik’s face.

“Did you really think I would step in here unarmed?” she says.

Erik pauses in the crosshairs of whatever weapon Shuri’s modified into her beads. “You’re gonna kill me so soon after saving me? Your bro cool with that?”

“He would understand.”

For all Erik knows, Shuri is right. He feels the temptation anyway to push on, make Shuri kill him, learn for herself what it’s like to be a kin-slayer like her pops, and he forces himself to restrain the impulse. “What do you know about my father?” Erik asks again.

“I know he was a traitor.”

“Zuri tell you that? Or your brother? You know what? Maybe you oughta stay quiet, after all.”

“Oh, don’t worry, we’re finished here. I’m more than happy to kick you out now.” The blue beam remains centered on him even as Shuri points to two of the men beside her. “Unfortunately for them, Gheilani and Heri here drew the short straw and now they have to be your new guards.”

Erik glances over the men in question, vaguely recognizes having seen them in the Palace, Gheilani with his reddish curls and sober, narrow features and Heri with scars on his left cheek, arms as thick as Erik’s.

“You mean they’re my babysitters.”

“Semantics. Wherever you go, they go.”

“And where exactly am I going?”

“Fort Hahn, where you’ll stay until your trial is over.”

“Right. We still pretendin’ anything I got to say is worth a damn.”

“The trial isn’t just about you,” Shuri retorts. “It’s also for the people you hurt. They deserve justice.”

Justice, Erik’s learned, doesn’t come in any court of law. It’s something you have to bring into existence yourself. With your hands, your fists. A gun and a spray of bullets. A blade to the throat of a king. Any way you can.

“You mean they want my head on a vibranium platter ‘cause I don’t see what else could be justice for them.”

“If that  _was_  what they wanted, could you really blame them? Isn’t that why you wanted to kill my brother? You said it was for your father.”

“I’m a simple man. I call it like it is.”

Shuri lowers her hand and presses at a bead that switches off the beam. She smiles, nothing warm in it. “Then why so scared? Never had to face the consequences of your actions before?”

“I’m not scared of shit, least of all you guys,” Erik says and smiles back, nothing warm in his, either. It turns out they have the same smile.

+

As a child, he’d dreamed of Wakanda’s lush fields and vast savannahs. Its tumbling waterfalls like uproarious children, crashing down and surging on towards the remote, pure white home of the Jabari. Shining vibranium structures both tall and humble settled happily under a sky that ran on and on, endlessly blue, untroubled by clouds.

He’d closed his eyes and seen crowded, secretive jungles, thickly scented and alive with the scurrying of hidden creatures, and stalking silently through the trees like an imperceptible shadow: the Black Panther. The warrior-king. Bast’s own champion.

Even if the rest of the world turned to dust, Wakanda would somehow remain. Wakanda would be forever.

But that had all just been a compound created by his mind, born from the amalgamation of his father’s stories and Erik’s own imagination.

The real Wakanda, Erik still hasn’t seen much of. Something in him had been reluctant. Resistant.  _Defiant_. It wasn’t the beauty he’d wanted to see. He’d wanted only what he needed. Wakanda’s weapons and secrets. The twin mantles of King and Panther.

As Gheilani and Heri take him to the Fort, Erik continues to refuse that beauty. He keeps his eyes forward. His gaze only strays when they arrive at an immense clearing. Before Erik can ask, Gheilani murmurs into his Kimoyo beads, and then the space before them ripples before splitting apart like a door, unveiling the modestly-sized complex where all of Wakanda’s convicts live as if in a hermetically sealed honeycomb. Once they’ve stepped through, the barrier melts back into sky and tree. Erik waits, but not even the slightest disturbance is left behind in the air to belie its presence.

Fort Hahn looks less like any kind of prison Erik had thought existed and more like a sleek townhouse with its curved walls, convex windows, sand-colored cladding. Behind glass doors, the cells are like small apartments. Simple, clean, functional. A living area adjoined with a bedroom. A bedroom connected to a bathroom. A tablet on one of the tables and a wardrobe populated with gray tunics and trousers and basic sandals.

For a long moment, Erik stands in the centre of the last type of place he’s ever wanted to be and swallows down on the bitterness, the indignation, churning and churning in him.

Force of habit gets him moving again, compelling him to memorize the layout of the rooms. He attempts a subtle scan for hidden devices, but cuts it fairly short. If the Wakandans don’t want him to find anything, he won’t. There could be a mic in the clothes given to him. He could have one tucked against his shoulder and he would never know.

Returning to the glass door, he raises his hand, displaying his Kimoyo band to his guards. “What’s the deal with this?  Why can’t I take it off?”

Gheilani explains, “It informs us of your whereabouts at all times, Your Highness. A precautionary measure we take with everyone held at the Fort.”

“So what you’re saying is I’m gonna have to get creative to get this thing off me.”

“I wouldn’t advise any such creativity.”  

“Will it do something nasty if I don’t behave? I seen that brand y’all put on Klaue.”

“Klaue was an outsider thief who would have bled this nation dry if given the chance,” says Heri. “You are Wakandan and also the King’s own cousin. No undue harm will come to you.”

“'Undue.'” Erik laughs. “You realize that ain’t so reassuring, right? ‘Specially when you got me locked up in this box here.”

“You’re welcome to walk around the grounds outside. Unless the circumstances demand it, we don’t require inmates to remain inside for the entirety of the day.”

“That’s not what I meant and you damn well know it.”

Still, Erik goes, ignoring the footsteps following him and the diligent eyes of the patrolling perimeter guards.

It’s midday at most, the heat deep enough that it would’ve made him sweat if not for the temperature-sensitive tech subtly incorporated into Wakandan clothing, keeping a soothing coolness tucked among the fibers. The copses of emerald trees surrounding the Fort are within view, deceptively close, reachable if not for the barrier.

It’s quiet.

Erik’s life has been governed by sound. The quick snick of a knife on an Oakland street, tires of getaway cars squealing. Children yelling as they played ball. Erratic patterns of roadside bombs and fire-fights that lasted hours into the night. But he’s also known shades of quiet, the uneasy kind he’d gotten used to on missions deep in hostile territory, where a fine layer of tension had rumbled beneath the wind, and the calamitous kind that pervaded an apartment empty except for a body on the floor, panther claws in the chest.

Now he’s standing in a tranquil silence that only makes him feel restless, trapped, all too aware that he’s burned all his bridges and there’s nowhere else for him to exist but in the ruins of the life he’d thought had ended on that sunset-drenched cliff-top.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Totally didn't anticipate I'd update as late as I am -- unfortunately my laptop problems are still persisting, so please bear with me! I hope the chapter makes up for the wait at least.

In the evening: T’Challa, again. Footsteps hushed as any clever-footed hunter of the night.

He has a book in his hand. Brown, thick, leather bound. A journal that used to be hidden in the secret compartments next to a Public Enemy poster, its pages bearing the secrets of another nation.

Erik deliberately keeps his face empty of recognition. He’s sitting at the pale wood table in the living area, a simple supper laid out in front of him of steaming chicken stew and fresh bread. A small bowl of cut fruit, a glass of water. Things he doesn’t need cutlery for. Erik hasn’t touched any of it yet.

T’Challa places the book on the table. “Aren’t you going to eat?” he says.

Erik shrugs. “Shoulda thought of that before you came in here and killed my appetite.”

T’Challa considers him. Erik considers him in return, trying to glean from the planes of T’Challa’s face if the palace cooks have already whispered to T’Challa of how the new king had refused the meal they’d made for him, visiting the kitchens in the middle of the night, instead, to rummage carefully through the well-stocked stores until he’d found snacks he could be sure were safe to eat.

“Can I?” T’Challa asks, gesturing to the food. “Unfortunately, my schedule didn’t leave me with much time to eat today.”

“Knock yourself out," Erik says.

Lightly, T'Challa perches himself against the table and the movement pushes his scent towards Erik – the same strange scent, unknowable scent, that had drifted from Erik’s father, that all Wakandans seem to carry, unique to this land. Erik can’t separate it into its various components. Figures maybe it’s the vibranium, its quiet presence threaded through the food they eat, their plants, their blood. If he took a stethoscope to them, he might even hear its metallic ringing echoing through their bodies like a buried song.

Soaking a small chunk of bread in the fragrant stew, T’Challa raises it to his mouth. He doesn’t make a show of chewing, but Erik understands what he’s doing.

“It would be counterproductive to save you,” T’Challa says, “if I was just going to poison you to death anyway.”

“No such thing as being too careful. You could say I’m not in an ideal situation right now.”

“Well, I certainly can’t argue against that.”

“Did you look through it?” Erik asks. He doesn’t bother with elaboration.

T’Challa dips another piece of bread, somehow manages to catch a slice of tender chicken without staining his fingers. “No. It isn’t mine to read.”

“I’m sensing a ‘but’.”

“But I caught a glimpse of the handwriting inside and I recognize it. I’ve seen his handwriting before in old notes and books.”

“He used to hide it,” Erik says. “Every time he caught me reading it, he’d say, ‘what did I tell you about going through my things?’ and then he’d smile and I’d know he wasn’t angry. He wasn’t ever angry. He wanted me to know about his home.”

“Your home, too. Despite everything, it still is.”

“It ain’t. I thought it could be. I thought it was. I know better now.” The Wakandans are different to everyone else and Erik, even with his father’s blood in his veins, is different to the Wakandans. There is no one else here like him. He’s anomalous. A species of his own in a country not his own, but that’s nothing new. It had been that way in America, too. “You here to just give me the book back and eat my food or you got some other business with me?”

T’Challa wipes his fingers clean on a nearby napkin that he scrunches up, holds in the loose curl of his fist. Solemnly, he says, “Tomorrow, we’ll be holding funerals. Among them, Zuri's. I thought you should know.”

“Why? I don’t give a shit. I told ‘em to get rid of his body and then I forgot all about Zuri.” The name still feels unusual on his tongue, when Erik had only known him as Uncle James.

“You felt strongly enough about him that you had to kill him.”

“I killed him ‘cause it was what he deserved," Erik corrects. "Eye for an eye. The Babylonians knew what was up.”

T’Challa makes a humorless sound. “A couple of weeks ago, I might have even agreed with that kind of philosophy.”

“You mean when yo pops got killed and you went crazy?” Erik’s mouth twists into a small, vicious sickle. It’s a gratifying little detail to know that they’ve both sought out revenge like it was blood in the water, all they could smell, inhale, the need for it clamoring in between the beat of their hearts. “You ain’t as perfect as you make yourself out to be.”

“But I never claimed to be perfect. What separates me from you is that I learn and I learn better.”

“Oh, that what you call it? I thought it was jus’ you having a lack of balls.”

“Is that why I am King and you are not, N’Jadaka?” T’Challa's voice is a smooth blade, each word cutting precise.

Erik’s smile falls. “I see where your sis gets it from.”

“You always seem to have a reply yourself, so perhaps it really is a family trait,” T’Challa says. “Was it your friends in the CIA who told you about Sergeant Barnes and Zemo?”

“Every organization’s got their gossips. I heard you made a friend of your own. That obnoxious little bastard, Ross.”

“It doesn’t hurt to have someone on the inside of such an...active foreign intelligence service.”

“You know the shit they done to Black people in America and on this continent? Me, I was pretending to be their friend. You seem to actually think they’re gonna be your friend.”

“I’m not assuming anything. I can’t afford to. We’re in uncharted territory now.”

“So what are you gonna do if it turns out he’s a double agent?”

“If it comes to that, I’ll handle it. You needn’t concern yourself.”

It’s another casual, galling reminder of the shift in power between them. Erik narrows his eyes. Asks, “Speaking of _friends,_  where W’Kabi at? Shouldn’t he be right here in the Fort, too?”

“As is befitting a man who committed treason,” T’Challa says flatly. “You won’t be running into him, however. It’s better if your paths don’t cross.”

“My bad. Looks like I been a bad influence on him.”

“He made his choices. Ultimately, our own actions are the only things we can answer for and you should focus on yours. If you look on your tablet, you will find texts to help you understand our legal system. We have advisors—”

“I'm not interested,” Erik interrupts. “I ain’t going along with this charade y’all putting on of wanting to help me, so I'll speak for myself.”

"You’ll be expected to. You could say trials in Wakanda are closer to discussions than questionings.” T’Challa straightens himself, ready to leave, then he stops, eyes pausing on Erik’s father’s journal, something about it prodding him to add, “There is still another conversation we need to have, but I think I’ll spare you for tonight."

"Maybe you should spare me completely and let me get the fuck outta here."

"You can make your case for that next week,” T’Challa says dryly. “Let the guards know if you require anything – within reason.”

Erik waits 'til the glass door has hissed shut behind T’Challa to look back at the journal. Just look. He knows all its contents by heart. Time and time again, he’s ran his fingers over neat black and blue writing, felt the grooves lightly sunk into the paper from the precise press of his father’s pen, the weight of his most private thoughts.

_Who are you, my son? You will ask this one day and know the answer:_

_N’Jadaka, son of N’Jobu_.

The bread, when Erik finally reaches for it, is faintly warm, tearing easily under the pull of his fingers. He dips it into the stew, takes a bite. A sweet spiciness bursts through his mouth.  

Steadily, he eats until everything is gone. Erik doesn’t waste food. He hasn’t since he was made an orphan, son of nobody.

+

It isn’t so easy to sleep on a bed these days.

He's slept too often on desert dunes and forest floors and the uncomfortable earth of too many countries that the softness of a bed troubles him. Makes him toss and turn. He remembers Linda peeking over the top of her laptop, frowning down at him where he’d been sprawled on the cold floor rather than beside her.  

She’d shaken him awake from a bad dream once, her hand insistent on his arm, then her hand in his, crushed in a vice grip, her throat soft in the grasp of his other hand, the pulse fast and skittish against his thumb like a metronome out of control. A scared animal’s heart.  

“Don’t fucking do that,” he’d hissed, letting go, knowing already that there’d be marks left behind. “I could kill you if you pull that kinda shit.”

“It’s OK,” she’d said. Eyes glossy. Smile quivering on her lips. “You won’t kill me. It’s OK.”

But Erik had. He’d cleanly put a bullet in her that had stopped her scared animal’s heart, left her body skewed on the ground, easy as that, and he'd walked away because hers wasn't the corpse he had any interest in. Now he’s here, staring at a bed that, even in a cell, is unfamiliar with its luxury. A luxury that’s his due. That he despises.

Erik turns away from it. There’s the table with the journal he can’t bring himself to touch. He turns away from that also.

Part of him still wants to believe the ancestral plane had simply been a hallucination induced by the Herb, but it had felt too real, the apartment a pale yellow like an old photograph, the book exactly where it always was, and his father – his father like Erik had always known him.

Always, except for how he’d said, “Look at what I’ve done.” Eyes large and sad. Regretful. He’d looked at Erik not with pride but as if he were a sad, regrettable thing, and all Erik had wanted to say was, _This is for you. I did this for you._ _For_ ** _you_** _._ All those terrible things in Kandahar and Tegucigalpa. In Diffa and Hell’s Kitchen and Baltimore. Mogadishu and Fallujah. In too many places on too many occasions and even in his father’s own home. _For you._

Erik had abandoned him at the end. Abandoned both his father and mother. Picked the depths of the ocean instead of Djalia’s great veldt, got a prison cell in Wakanda instead, and he’s torn between laughing and breaking something because isn’t that some shit?

In the end, he’s forced into picking up the tablet. It activates with a press of his finger and pours out a deluge of information like a starter’s pack to Wakanda. All kinds of images, videos, and literature. Historical accounts and scientific findings, even access to news outlets, but carefully chosen, he suspects, so that he doesn’t know too much. Only knows as much as a Wakandan child.

Erik reads one report after another, sees himself branded a usurper and T’Challa, Shuri, Okoye, some River Tribe girl called Nakia all hailed as heroes. He learns of how the Jabari, led by a giant, a M'Baku, had rolled down from their mountain, spilling onto the flatlands at the last second with their chanting grunts and weapons of enhanced wood to overwhelm the Border Tribe, slotting into place the final piece of T’Challa’s victory.

Searching through older stories, Erik looks for the messy underbelly of pristine Wakanda. He doesn’t find it. Aside from periodic clashes with neighboring Niganda and fairly small inter-tribal disagreements, there’s virtually no mention of major violence, just a negligible crime rate and a basic street patrol force. Nothing like all the cops he’s seen in his life, the ones who'd hounded his steps, chasing an imagined threat in the hair on his head, the color of his skin. All the times he could’ve been just one wrong look, wrong word, away from a bullet to the brain.

Erik has to take a moment. Envy sits acrid at the back of his mouth. Translates into resentment in the rigid curl of his palms around the tablet’s vibranium edges.

With more force than necessary, he stabs his fingers at the texts T’Challa had mentioned, skimming through the rundown of Wakanda’s legal system, its particular focus on restoration and rehabilitation, punitive measures more often than not a last resort – exile in the mountains rather than execution. Smaller cases are handled by lower ranking judges and a number of representatives from each tribe, resolved within a morning’s work, but a case such as his would be the responsibility of a Chief Justice and include King and Council, likely carrying on throughout the day. A whole day being subjected to the judgment of those he’d rather burn to the ground.

Erik throws the tablet to a side, careless, knowing it won’t break. He lies down on the floor beside the bed. With his command, the windows turn opaque, the room plummeting into a darkness so complete, he could maybe reach out and touch the velvet fabric of it. Inhale its thickness and let it clot in his lungs and suffocate him.

He almost wishes it was true.

Staring into that nothingness, Erik slows and quietens his breathing down into something barely noticeable. The sound of a man comatose. A ghost haunting himself.

+

The singing begins at noon. It reaches them in the Fort, haunting snatches like messages from a far-flung, unearthly world.

Erik listens and carefully pieces together the fragmented lyrics. Iimbongi, he realizes. Praise poets extolling the virtues of the dead, singing of their lives.

Standing outside, as close to the edge of the barrier as he’s allowed, he sees through the trees plumes of fire, plumes of smoke, twined together into braids of black and orange-gold that graze their tips along the sky.

“How long they gonna sing for?” he asks his two new companions.

“Until the hour strikes midnight and the new day begins,” Heri replies. His armor is gone, as is Gheilani’s, as is every other guard’s. Exchanged for simple white outfits. Mourning clothes. “They’ll sing the longest for the great shaman as he was well-loved by the people.”

“That’s ‘cause they don’t know what he did. Do you guys?”

“We’ve been briefed,” Heri says, succinct.

“Then you know why I put him in the ground.”

“Did it accomplish anything?” asks Gheilani coolly, the same ice in his eyes.

Erik arches a brow. “You allowed to talk to me like that? Last I checked, I’m still royalty.”

“Amongst other things. Hence why you are in the Fort at all.”

“Y’all smart-mouthed fuckers." Erik scoffs, turning back to the distant smoke and fire and singing. "Figures that’s who I’d end up with.” 

There’d always been a funeral to attend, but the only one he’d ever gone to had been his father’s, a quick, unremarkable affair with only old Mrs Harris and Reggie from school standing beside him. Uncle James had mysteriously disappeared; all the other folks his dad had known had suddenly disappeared, too. As his father, hidden in a plain, state-issued pine box, had been lowered into the ground, Mrs Harris’s frail hand had slipped down onto Erik’s shoulder, her weak voice croaking, “He’s gone to a better place now.” Heaven, she’d been referring to, but Erik had been thinking of the veldt, his father running free, Bast and Sekhmet watching over him.

He knows, now, the truth. That beautiful sky with its swirl of colors and that land with no end is out of his father’s reach. He’s a caged specter, trapped in the shoebox apartment they’d called home as if Bast and Sekhmet had judged him and found him wanting.

Mrs Harris hadn’t lasted for many months after that, the cancer attacking swift and relentless. Several years later brought news through the grapevine that Reggie had died from a crack overdose, and Erik hadn’t been surprised. He hadn’t been surprised at all.

He’d always assumed Uncle James had ended up in a grave of his own. Uncle James, who’d offered to help him with math even though Erik had never needed it. Uncle James, who’d bought Erik his favorite sneakers, talked basketball with him, been nothing but weird, familiar Uncle James -- but all along he’d been Zuri of Wakanda, vanishing back into her embrace until Erik had come along to put him into the long overdue grave Zuri belonged in.

“My father didn’t get no song, did he,” Erik says. “You think that was fair?”

“He should’ve received a proper burial,” Heri says. “He was also loved. We would’ve sung for him.”   

 _And me?_ Erik considers asking. _Would you have sung for me?_

The thought doesn’t make it out of his mouth. He already knows the answer. Erik turns around, goes back inside, ignores the voices of the iimbongi following his steps, singing songs they never would sing for him.

+

It suits him just fine that he’s generally left to his own devices for the rest of the week and it fills him with an urge to rip the walls apart with his bare hands.

Erik understands patience, though. Was forced into learning it, became good at it. How to lay low, seem innocuous, disarmed.  

He walks the grounds at every opportunity, Gheilani and Heri always at his back, and takes all his meals in his cell, away from scrutiny. He reads on his tablet and visits the Fort’s training facility, running through exercises that had stuck from Boot Camp. He watches the guards around him and ignores the prisoners and he never sees W’Kabi. Sleep comes to him in sporadic bursts that bring no rest.

The evening before Erik’s trial, T’Challa returns.

Erik suppresses the initial instinct to tell him to fuck off; in this country full of enemies, it’s his greatest enemy that seems the safest to be near for now.

“Hey, King,” he says, leaning against the entryway that connects the living area to the bedroom and watching T’Challa seat himself at the table Erik eats at, perfect posture like every chair is merely an extension of his throne. “How you been? You enjoy Zuri’s funeral?”

“You don’t waste time, do you, N’Jadaka?”

“I’ve waited years to say half this shit to you and I ain’t waiting no more. You brought this on yourself by keeping me alive."

“It appears so.” T’Challa adds nothing else, falling into a silence that has a contemplative slant to it. He glances outside at the soft purple dusk, the turn of his face hiding his expression. Erik goes to prompt him, when T’Challa says, carefully, somberly, “I thought of Zuri as a second father. I loved him as a second father. And in a handful of days, I lost my father and I lost Zuri. That must make you happy to know. It must seem – fair and then some, yes?” 

“Yeah,” Erik says blithely. "Funny how the universe works, huh?" The vindictiveness sweeping through him is profuse and sweet, but it’s sour, too, ‘cause it doesn’t mean shit when he’s stuck here and his father’s stuck elsewhere. 

“I don’t think it’s the universe that’s at fault here, just human folly.”

“Whatever you say, man, but hey, if you ever wanna work through your pain, do me a favor and don’t come to me.”

“I think it’s safe to say you’re the last person I’d come to,” T’Challa replies, turning back from the sky, and his face is smooth, empty of anything raw that might've been revealed just a few seconds ago. “I’m only here for that conversation I told you we still need to have. You should hear this from me first, before I have to share it tomorrow in front of everyone else.”

“Hear what?”

“The truth about what happened that night between your father, mine, and Zuri.”

There’s an abrupt swoop inside Erik like everything’s been upturned. He loses his nonchalance, steps closer to T’Challa before he can stop himself. “The truth? How am I s’posed to know whatever crap you’re about to feed me is the truth?”

“You don’t, but lies and omissions are what brought us here. I have no reason and certainly no desire to continue that on. Unfortunately, the only person who could still tell us anything of that night died at your hands.”

“He coulda been lying to protect your dad.”

“I don’t believe that he was.” T’Challa’s eyes turn unseeing, his gaze thrown back into the past, into a memory Erik wants to peek inside for himself. “You didn’t see Zuri when he confessed it all. His face. His tears. I don’t say this to convince you. I know how little anything I can say will assure you, but in the end, Zuri tried in his own way to make amends.”

“He should’ve tried harder and earlier.”

T’Challa’s gaze darts back into the moment, fixes itself hook-like on Erik. “He wasn’t the one who killed Uncle N’Jobu.”

“He didn’t think nothing about leaving me behind, though,” Erik spits back.

“His loyalty turned from virtue into vice, it’s true,” T’Challa agrees, and receiving an agreement at all makes Erik pause. “I imagine some new lessons have been learned here recently about loyalty.”

“Glad I could help,” Erik says blandly. “Just what I came to Wakanda for.”

“How much do you know of what your father had been planning back then? We made it public knowledge that Klaue had stolen vibranium from us and you brought his body, so that you could pretend you were delivering justice, but did you know about your father’s involvement with him? Did he know whose son you were?”

“He had no clue. If my dad was doing anything with him, it would’ve only been to use Klaue, same way I used him. He wouldn’t have been in league with that piece of shit for any other reason.”

“Whether he was using Klaue as a means to an end or not, it still means treason. I know you know that. He had blood on his hands.”

“Your sister said the same shit, calling my dad a traitor.” The recollection plucks at Erik’s nerves. “That’s why your pops killed mine?”

T’Challa shakes his head. “Zuri had been a War Dog assigned to watch your father. Pass on information. He informed my father that Uncle N’Jobu had been the one to help Klaue steal the vibranium, so my father went to retrieve it and bring Uncle N’Jobu back to Wakanda to stand trial. When Zuri revealed his true identity, Uncle N’Jobu, in anger and feeling betrayed, attempted to murder him. My father intervened.”

“What, the great Black Panther couldn’t take down a guy without killing him?”

“Perhaps he was reacting on instinct when your father drew his weapon, but I can only speculate. You came into my throne room and called me the son of a murderer. It seems you aren’t exempt yourself. The both of us have to face that our fathers hadn’t always been the moral, infallible men we thought they were.”

For long moments, Erik’s jaw refuses to open. He feels an anger that wipes clean all words and all thought except for one, a memory of his own: the long hours he’d spent clutching the empty house of his father’s body in his arms, bright red blood thickening beneath his fingers, darkening, sluggish treacle he could not hope to contain although he’d tried. The carpet had gotten stained. Erik doesn’t know who cleaned it. If it got cleaned at all.

“Nah,” he says. Drags it out of himself, a low, furious slice of sound. T’Challa is watching him closely with those eyes that have already seen too much of Erik and are learning still and Erik will deny them. “Nah, you think you and me are gonna connect over this? This ain’t some after-school special. You say that shit about your dad if you want, but you didn’t know mine. He was just trying to do good. That’s all. And he got killed for it.”

Grim and blunt, _disappointed_ , T’Challa says, “He was a prince of Wakanda, who chose to sacrifice Wakandan lives even as he spoke about liberation.”  

“Nobody said doing the right thing was gonna be easy,” Erik argues, moving closer so that T’Challa can see it, see all the disdain Erik holds for his pretty ideals, and T’Challa must see it, because he stands up to meet Erik with his own anger crystallized in the uncompromising set of his face. “The world ain’t so black and white,” Erik continues, “but I can see why a sheltered Wakandan would think it is, like a damn child.”

“Don’t talk down to me, N’Jadaka. You think because you’re comfortable with needless death that you’re somehow pragmatic. Whatever lies you’ve told yourself, I haven’t spent my entire life shut off in Wakanda. I’ve been out there for a number of years. I have, against orders, saved lives, while you, on orders, took life.”

“You had the luxury of _choice_. I had nothing else going for me, but I knew - I knew I was gon’ drag myself into this fucking country no matter what and I was gon’ fix things, the way my pops wanted to fix things, so that boys like me got choice.”

“I would’ve helped you,” T’Challa replies like he actually means it. “If you’d come here any other way, I would’ve helped you. I _wanted_ to help you, but you insisted on the challenge.”

“Don’t lie to me,” Erik hisses. “I’m sick of lies.”

“I’m not lying,” T’Challa says firmly. He says, “I won’t lie like my father did. Like your father did. Like you did. I’ll always tell you the truth,” and there isn’t any artifice in him, and Erik thinks he hates that more.

+

He dreams that night.

He dreams of his father judged and found wanting, barred from the splendor of the ancestral plane.

He dreams of himself on the other side of the apartment door, unable to open it as his scars bleed without end. He is bleeding without end. They are killing him, his scars, the last remnants of the lives he’s taken, their ghosts in his skin judging him, finding him wanting, and enacting a revenge so perfect, Erik could never replicate it in life.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1) I'm lifting all info about T'Challa's early BP days from the tie-in prelude comics, which tell us he became Black Panther slightly earlier than when Tony Stark publicly reveals himself as Iron Man. According to that, he's been BP for eight years by the time we first see him in Civil War. An icon! 
> 
> 2) Imbongi (plural: iimbongi) - traditional Xhosa praise poet/oral poet (also in Zulu culture as well). From my understanding, they sing praises for figureheads, demonstrating great knowledge of history and lineage, but can also make social/political commentary as well and perform on other occasions such as funerals (e.g. Nelson Mandela's funeral).
> 
> 3) That "Hell's Kitchen" I threw in for places Erik's done unsavoury things in is just a small reference to the new Killmonger comic run, where he has some dealings with Wilson Fisk. 
> 
> 4) I've opted out of using real countries around the borders of Wakanda, so Niganda (and other fictional countries) is from Coates's run, I believe.
> 
> 5) Q: Is this fic just going to be Erik and T'Challa arguing all the time? A: Uhhhhhh.

**Author's Note:**

> 1) I realize I could have had Erik wearing that blue gown thing Ross wears in the film, but the idea of Erik Killmonger covering up his chest? In _this_ economy? 
> 
> 2) Fort Hahn is from Ta-Nehisi Coates's _A Nation Under Our Feet_ and I've changed it up, because it is very much not townhouse-looking and small-apartment-having in the comics the way it is in my fic.


End file.
